Test jesus under plastic

So if you Google for reviews on The Submarine's second album, you don't even get the one I wrote (maybe if you kept up, but I only looked for five pages). And it's all because of this Apple ad:
So this is my post where I strut and say that I was way ahead of everyone being all cool—I wrote my review this past summer, giving these super-poppy kids the thumbs up. Hardly shook up the world.  But hey it's my blog, so I gotta work the cred any chance I get.  ;-)

Anyway, here's what I said then (for Innocent Words):

The Submarines
Honeysuckle Weeks
(Nettwerk Records)

Hip-SoCal-popsters are all over The Submarines, the Weepies-like, boy-girl duo that showed up via (sigh:) Grey’s Anatomy and had done the NPR interview and released an iTunes exclusive cut before most 20-somethings could get an intelligent blog post sketched up in draft.

The sound is Fiest meets Postal Service with a touch more cheese, which is what you’d expect from a love-struck couple that produced their first album by breaking up and simultaneously penning songs about it. Back together, their second effort Honeysuckle Weeks proves that John Dragonetti knows his programming—his beat loops and square-wave tones (beep! boop!) provide the arcade layer and fun, while Blake Hazard (she’s the girl) slips the in the poppy charm. Though both sing, Hazard’s vocals dominate the tracks with cute-smart lyrics about a relationship that went bad for a time but is happily back on course. Occasionally gag-able (Every day I wake up ~I chose love ~ I chose light) , but not infrequently insightful (maybe we’re strong, but maybe, maybe we’re wrong), the pop duo finds the hook buried in every song and charts it with las, ahs, and the occasional underwater glockenspiel.

While I could do without a few of the extra claps, the couple is enigmatic (she’s the great-granddaughter of F. Scott Fitzgerald) and have an electronic whiz-kid thing that’s tightly produced and even Beatles-aware. Toss in a few more socially conscious themes (“You, Me, and the Bourgeois” dogs plastic bottles and sweatshop clothing) and The Submarines dive deep enough for a second play.

It's rumored that Steve Jobs hand-picks all the Apple songs for their commercials.  I'd like to pick on him for that, but I were in his position, I'm sufficiently self-inflated about my own music taste that I probably would too.  (although on Honeysuckle Weeks, I gotta say track 5—"The Wake Up Song" is even better than "You, Me, and the Bourgeoisie").

When I was originally on my grad school and then seminary search, I was hugely attracted to Mars Hill Graduate School in Seattle. Already familiar with their President Dan Allender, the way MGHS framed their approach to theological education through a Deep Beauty view of the world called to me like family I hadn't yet known.

But in the end, though I struggled, I wound up dismissing them because they did not yet have the accreditation I needed to keep the door open for PhD work. But I still like to keep tabs on them now and then.  Check out this great promo video on loving your neighbor.


mhgs what no. 2 from blaine hogan on Vimeo.
(I don't know who Blaine Hogan is, but I have noticed that it looks like he just recently moved over to my neck of the woods to work for Willow)

I still have this funny hope that'll I'll find some connection with MHGS people. It's been a rather different experience here at NPTS... as an artist I sense I've shelved an entire side of me.  The social tone and space is warm, but encourages a traditionalism more akin to the Thanksgiving silk flowers on your parents table than the open mic, silver and expectant in the upstairs part of the gallery. The portraits in the halls are of elderly Swedes (none of whom I know about).  Culture is recognized here, but as something "other?"—something to be studied (vs. created). Sometimes it is perhaps presented in contradictory ways. My communicating the faith class made attempts, but at the end of the day had a superficial, contrived approach (to its defense--it's focus was personal evangelism). My theology class and others have had a incredibly dim view of beauty in the face of sin. I haven't had a class with missiologist Paul DeNeui (I typically find the missiologists the most insightful on culture in general). But I suspect that none of our classes embody expression that is detailed, creative, playful, and revelatory. I haven't seen professors here that think this way. (Nor at TEDS, where I've taken some additional courses).  Honestly, I think there are only a few classmates here that would naturally fit in a MHGS-lensed world.  Only a few of us who want to talk about life as art, indie music, and discover truth while tracing a twilight skyline.

Which again is hardly to discount the things I like very much at North Park. Just to wonder again at how I'm a "different person" here than I might be elsewhere.

Before I recently wrote a review of Kasey Chamber's newest album Rattlin' Bones, I didn't know a lot about her, except of her few more popular songs in the US.  The country singer is a down-home Australian (really) whose pop-country is enough off the mainstream to like her.  I can't post my review cause it hasn't been published yet, but I've gotta note her video of her 2004 single Pony, which I can't stop watching.  Chambers bats happy, expressive eyes to be simultaneously five years old and all grown up.  The video makes the song.



There's something about Kasey here that makes me think "little sister"—which makes me think of my fake little sister Heidi (something about her facial expressions) and my real little sister Erika (who is hardly a country fan, but I think will like this anyway).

This has me laughing so hard I was tearing up. Can't believe how well Tina Fey picked up Sarah Palin. Gotta wonder if anyone on the current cast could have done as well. Still, I think SNL's got some juice to it. Plus, I love nerdy political humor.